Untapped Energy Source: The Deep Blue

Most people have heard of wind energy, solar energy and hydroelectric energy, but ocean energy? This field — while comparatively underdeveloped — is gaining attention from universities, industry and government organizations.

“There are so many opportunities for education: outreach at a public level, at a K-12 level, and at colleges and universities because there is so little really known about it,” said Susan Skemp, executive director at Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Ocean Energy Technology.

The Center is piloting a project with the potential of harnessing the energy of the Gulf Stream. While there are still many unknowns about this field, Skemp compared ocean current energy to that of wind and solar: Ocean currents are continuous whereas wind and solar devices are only able to collect power during peak hours.

Still, availability is not a means to an end. There are other factors to consider, such as potential environmental impacts and the cost to produce this type of energy. The Center is researching how it will deploy a turbine into the Gulf Stream to collect data about the environment and assess the technology.

“We're treating this as a system,” Skemp said. “It's the environment and the ecosystem, the marine habitat, the ocean current, then you integrate power generation devices. This is a new operational area, so there's a lot more unknown about ocean energy, the environment that we're operating in and what constitutes acceptable risks.”

In order for ocean energy to reach commercialization, Skemp said that universities should create — instead of duplicating programs — a research plan to build on each other’s expertise. Such a plan would have to be multidisciplinary to meet the different needs of scientists, engineers, policy-makers and environmentalists.

“It's going to be a challenge,” Skemp said, “but it's also an opportunity for new science, new technology, new ways of using old technology for reforming it to a new environment.”


Photo: A preliminary artist's rendering of future ocean energy technology from FAU's Center for Ocean Energy Technology. The energy (kinetic flow, thermal and cold water cooling) captured from different ocean energy devices will be transported to shore via underwater cables and distributed through existing electrical grids.